Originally posted by Middle East Eye — January 25, 2015, updated March 16, 2015

By Joe Gill

Leading experts in international law, anthropology and planning have condemned Israel’s threatened forced transfer of thousands of Bedouin in the occupied West Bank as a violation of international humanitarian law and a potential “war crime”.

The experts called for the prosecution of Israeli officials who are responsible for implementing plans to relocate as many as 12,500 Bedouin to a centralised township near Jericho, called Nweima, to make way for new Israeli settlements.

It is one of several sites proposed by the Israeli authorities for the relocation of some 30,000 pastoralist Bedouin people. The plan has sparked international concern for the plight of the Bedouin and condemnation from world leaders.

The Palestinian Jahalin Bedouin communities reside mostly between Jerusalem and Jericho in the occupied West Bank’s Area C, where the Israeli army controls security and planning and has carried out many demolitions of Bedouin homes and schools over recent decades…